by As we’ve all read, any number of groups, municipalities, and other entities have condemned Arizona for its attempt to curb illegal immigration, and some have urged or declared boycotts against the State. Among these righteously indignant entities are the San Diego City Council and a San Diego school district (for which Arizona’s law enforcement policies are evidently an urgent item of business). Arizonans are now, predictably and understandably, retaliating. An article in the local newspaper this morning reports that San Diego hotels and tourism-related businesses are worried because a significant number of Arizonans (who typically come here in droves to escape the Arizona summer heat) are cancelling their plans to visit.
It is all reminiscent of the situation a couple of years ago, when opponents of California’s Proposition 8 (repealing same-sex marriage) boycotted supporters or contributors, proponents of the proposition sometimes declared boycotts against opponents, the AALS and other groups declared boycotts or partial boycotts of a Hyatt hotel because an owner had contributed to the proposition, etc., etc. Such cause-based boycotts are an increasingly familiar part of American life.
This development is disturbing, I think, on more than one ground. In an increasingly fractious and uncivil culture, the Arizona boycotts in particular raise at least three sorts of concerns.
First, the boycotts exhibit a disturbing inability or unwillingness of people to respect the boundaries that make life in a pluralistic society possible. We disagree about lots of things, and one way we manage to get along is by recognizing multiple jurisdictions or spaces and then letting people make decisions and live their lives within their jurisdictions without trying to intrude ourselves. In short, by learning to “mind our own business.” Constitutionalists might associate this strategy with federalism; Reformed thinkers might consider it under the heading of “sphere sovereignty”; Catholics might relate it to the notion of “subsidiarity.” Of course, people can try to talk with and persuade other people across boundaries; that’s entirely consistent with respectful civility. And just how the boundaries should be drawn is often a contested matter (which is why I can make a living teaching things like Constitutional Law and Federal Jurisdiction). But I think a San Diego school district would have a tough time explaining why its proper business includes pronouncing on Arizona’s immigration policies. Doesn’t the district have enough legitimate problems of its own to deal with? Why can’t it mind its own business?
Second, I believe these boycotts, like the Proposition 8 boycotts and similar measures, pose a real threat to freedom of speech. True, boycotts aren’t illegal. You don’t have to buy from or patronize someone if you don’t want to. But John Stuart Mill, surely one of the champions of free speech, emphasized that freedom of speech and thought can be as severely undermined by cultural or social censorship as by official legal censorship. And boycotts are plainly an attempt to censor. They do not consist of respectful engagement with differently-minded people and views; they are an attempt to punish those people for supporting particular positions. Voltaire famously declared, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” The spirit and logic of boycotts is utterly different: “I may not have the ability to stop you from expressing your view, but if I can I will put you out of business for saying it.”
No doubt the boycotters might respond that they respect contrary opinions so long as these are not immoral, or are not promoting immorality. Their boycott reflects not censorship, but rather a refusal to be complicit with evil. That response points to a third worrisome aspect of the boycotts: they reflect, I believe, an alarming proclivity to demonize opponents, and to moralize complicated issues in simplistic and unhealthy ways. It’s sometimes said that we live in immoral, or amoral, or at least morally unmoored times, and I believe there is considerable truth in this sort of assessment. But the upshot, it seems, is often not a prudent reluctance to make moral judgments, but rather an ever more urgent compulsion to establish one’s own moral rectitude by comparison– namely, by finding people or ideas to whom (secure in one’s own righteousness) one can attribute immoral or hateful motives. This tendency seems rampant in the current controversy.
A colleague of mine who has studied the matter tells me that the Arizona law doesn’t actually even do very much, and he remarks that the law has mostly served as a symbol for vilification by people who usually haven’t even read it. (Such as the US Attorney General.) People may not even want to read the law, he suspects, because they might be disappointed to discover that it isn’t as evil as they want and need it to be. I myself haven’t studied the law, and I don’t know whether this assessment is wholly accurate or not. But it does seem that a lot of people in San Diego and San Francisco and Boulder and elsewhere are getting a good deal of self-congratulatory gratification from having something to condemn. Something by contrast to which their own lofty character can shine forth. In many instances, their righteousness leads them not only to condemn something they have taken little trouble to understand, but to impose economic penalties indiscriminately on something as abstract as a “State” (which includes, obviously, millions of people of all sorts of races, ethnicities, and political views). I find that phenomenon alarming.
In my experience, most people who call for boycotts are usually pretty sure that they are acting in an eminently moral fashion. For myself, I think these measures, and the kind of thinking they reflect, represent a serious threat to civility– and to our ability to maintain an increasingly fragile E Pluribus Unum. It’s time, I humbly submit, for a bit of reflection on the (im)morality of boycotts.
The Arizona immigration law is understood by some to impinge on rights (more or less directly via encouraging racial profiling and indirectly by representing and reinforcing racial prejudice), and rights anywhere are generally understood to be everyone’s business. It’s not understood as a speech issue.
I agree the reaction to the law involves a lot of overheated rhetoric and misunderstanding, and much of the boycotting may be fueled by that. But I don’t oppose the boycotts. I think the law is sufficiently wrongheaded and harmful to a vulnerable community to warrant that degree of sanction. This is particularly true as there is a real risk of Arizona’s example being followed by other states. Many who won’t be fazed by moral appeals on this highly emotional matter will be moved by financial threat.
To be clear, I don’t think the law requires or attempts to legalize racial profiling of an illegitimate kind, nor that it will necessarily result in very much inappropriate profiling. However, it will put the local police in the position of enforcing immigration law, which will unavoidably increase the barriers between police and an especially vulnerable population. It also represents, in my view, a kind of fear and misunderstanding that needs to be opposed forcefully because it can spread so easily.
So I’m all for better understanding and less hatefulness all around, but I hope the boycotts are effective.
I agree with your third point — we need to combat our tendency to demonize those with whom we disagree and to simplify morally complex issues — but I’m not sure if boycotts per se are the problem. In most cases, I have a hard time seeing boycotts as “crossing lines.” If an individual, group, or municipality announces a boycott of a entity with which they do no business, then they’re just grandstanding. If they actually are withdrawing or refraining from business that they would otherwise engage in, then they’re not crossing any lines — they’re acting on matters that are already within their purview, so I’m not sure whether sphere sovereignty or subsid really apply. I think boycotts can be a key element of a society that takes subsidiarity seriously: rather than petitioning the state to shut down behavior we don’t like, we withdraw our support for the behavior in an effort to change it from the bottom up. Boycotts also seem to me to be an application of solidarity — i.e., MLK’s famous assertion that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” I admit that I roll my eyes when the Boulder city council announces another boycott, but my problem is with the council’s decision-making in that particular context, not with boycotts in general.
In suggesting “a bit of reflection on the (im)morality of boycotts,” I meant just that; I didn’t mean to suggest that boycotts are always wrong or immoral. Reflection might lead to the articulation of distinctions about when boycotts are or aren’t appropriate. I have no theory in this respect, but I would guess that relevant criteria might include things like (a) how wrong is the view or conduct that might be the subject of a boycott?, (b) how clear is it that the view or conduct is wrong? [which is not the same question as (a), of course], (c) how effective might a boycott be in discouraging the wrong?, (d) how discriminating might the boycott be in imposing sanctions/disincentives on the wrong-thinkers/wrong-doers, as opposed to punishing a broad group of people, many of whom may be without any responsibility for the wrong views or conduct? I imagine that the sorts of considerations that theorists of “complicity” point to would be relevant here as well. These are just a few concerns that come readily to mind; as I said, I have no theory of when boycotts are proper.
Whether “rights” are at stake might be a consideration, as Sanpete suggests. However, I myself would be extremely wary of any view suggesting that boycotts or similar measures are appropriate whenever “rights” are involved. The notion and categories of “rights” these days are way too amorphous and elastic, in my view, to do much useful work here. More might be said on this point, but this is a blog comment, so I’ll leave it at that.
What is important to recognize, I think, is that boycotts themselves are not efforts to engage and reason and in these ways to persuade anyone of the error of some objectionable view or policy. Rather, they constitute blunt condemnation and the imposition of sanctions. They are very unlikely to produce mutual understanding or civil discourse. There is a place for such measures, I think– probably against patent, egregious wrongdoing where civil engagement would seem pointless and even inappropriate. If a group is engaging in deliberate genocide, for example, or lyncing, “Come let us reason together” is an inapt response. I really have no settled view on the propriety of the AZ immigration policies, but I doubt that they are comparable in these respects to practices as to which boycotts would be an appropriate response. And if boycotts become too common and easy, I continue to think they can be quite destructive of civil society.
Steve, I do appreciate your point and what I take to be the impulse behind it. Reflecting on the questions you raise, I still feel the boycotts are appropriate.
There has been civil (and not so civil) discourse about the issues surrounding Arizona’s new law for decades. If there’s some additional way to try to quickly persuade Arizona through talking that it’s on the wrong track, one that’s likely to be more effective than past efforts, maybe that should be tried first. Nothing comes to mind, though. And it does seem to me that quick action is needed. The news this morning is that ten other states are considering using Arizona’s law as a model.
The boycotts shouldn’t prevent continued efforts to have civil discourse as well. In fact, they may encourage it. The prospect of losing money sometimes has a remarkable effect on opening the mind.
I agree the new law isn’t comparable to genocide or lynching. Neither is a boycott comparable to the measures appropriate as responses to those. A boycott (of the kind in question) is relatively low on the scale of sanctions we apply to perceived bad actions. It will affect both the guilty and the innocent, as it were, but I don’t know of any better option, and many of the innocent support the boycotts. Boycotts were reportedly effective against Arizona’s refusal to recognize the federal Martin Luther King holiday (which seems to have arisen from a related mindset).
In the longer term, there’s a good chance the new law will be found unconstitutional, and I support the lawsuits pressing for that, but I don’t think we can rely only on that possibility.
The notion of rights is broad, but the point isn’t that a boycott is appropriate wherever rights are violated, only that it’s everyone’s business. What an appropriate response is depends on how serious the violations are, among other things.
There are serious harms at stake that seem to me to warrant a serious response. To elaborate a bit the reason I gave, a long-standing rationale for keeping local law enforcement out of immigration law enforcement has been that people won’t cooperate with police when they know it will increase the chance of deportation for self, a family member or neighbor. Immigrants who believe cooperating with police will have that result don’t report crimes and don’t help police prevent or deal with them. This is believed to increase crime in both the immigrant community and neighboring communities. (Community policing has been designed in part to counteract the fears that lead to these effects. That will no longer be possible in the same ways.)
The effects of crime are often tragic, of course. Also at stake is a way of understanding and dealing with illegal immigration that increases xenophobia or prejudice rather than decreases it. It’s no accident that there’s a vast gap between the views of White and Hispanic Arizonans on this law. I think the risks are high that this law will increase the isolation and insularity of illegal immigrants and their communities, which include many legal residents, with bad results for all, but especially for the further marginalized community.
I would agree that boycotts are antithetical to a certain kind of stability and civic friendship, but, in the abstract, I don’t see why that is enough to morally condemn boycotts per se. Stability and civic friendship aren’t everything. I take it that the question is whether we ought to have stability to the extent that we have serious moral disagreements about the way in which government should be conducted, or whether any “stability” under such conditions is really just stability on the moral cheap–something like a mere modus vivendi, not a true polis.
The Arizona boycott is prime facie immoral. The source of the greivance is the state legislators who passed SB1070.
The remedy is to vote them out of office and repeal that law, although it may be found unconstitutional before that can happen. At the very least, this boycott should not have been initiated until judicial remedies were exhausted.
A boycott that attacks innocent third parties who have absolutely nothing to do with the greivance is immoral. It is analogous to a secondary boycott, all of which are immoral.
The irony here is that the boycott will harm many Hispanic businesses and even undocumented migrants themselves who are engaged in the tourism industry. But this is what happens when the leaders of the Hispanic lobby don’t really care about the people they claim to represent.